Imaginator
by Tolakasa
Summary: AU, future, Living in Dean's house requires all kinds of adjustments. Takes place a month or so after "This Christmas Day."


**Imaginator**

There were hazards to living in the same house as eleven kids, hazards Sam hadn't even imagined until he made the mistake of walking into the kitchen on the first school morning after Christmas break.

He'd come out of hunts with less damage. _Rough_ hunts.

_Then_, while he was still reeling, and possibly also a bit light-headed from hunger, Maggie, Johnny, and Kevin made a joint executive decision involving the bus and a couple of cousins, and next thing Sam knew, the Impala was full of not-yet-licensed teenagers and he was driving to the high school to drop them off. And was anybody nice enough to tell him how to get back home after they finished wowing their car-savvy pals by arriving in the Impala?

Of course not.

_Teenagers_.

Sam wound up in an antique grocery store on the edges of what passed for civilization in the Charlotte suburbs and spent entirely too much money on snacks and breakfast foods. Then he wasted a good ten minutes trying to convince the cashier to give him the street name (street signs? what street signs?) so that he could plug it into his phone and get directions back to Dean's. He was out of practice in charming information out of strangers, plus the cashier was barely out of high school and seemed to think his scar indicated some kind of terrorist affiliation.

What the hell terrorists would want with a run-down grocery store just south of the middle of nowhere, he had _no_ idea.

He made it back to the house without getting lost again, stocked his room, and from that day on, no matter _when_ he woke up, he never left his room before the kids were gone. If there was an emergency, he'd help—he made sure Dean knew that—but otherwise...

He was a little surprised that nobody complained about his unwillingness to participate in the morning madness, but apparently the chaos was public knowledge. Two of Dean's brothers-in-law just laughed when they heard about it (more accurately, they laughed at Dean; Sam got sympathy, advice, and a key to Firth's apartment for escape purposes), and Dean actually commented that he wished _he_ could hide from it.

Not that Sam believed that for a second. Dean was impossibly good at managing this insanity; Sam had never been so oblivious that he thought for one second that it was _Marcy_ running the domestic side of this operation. Now that Sam was trying not to let his own guilt blind him, it was equally obvious that Dean also _loved_ managing this madhouse, the same way he'd loved hunting. Maybe even a little more. Dean was a caretaker at heart, he always had been, and now he could indulge that instinct as far as Marcy and the social service system would let him.

Sam, though... Sam wasn't at all certain of his place in all this, or even if he _had_ a place in it, any more than sand had a place in the shell of an oyster. He'd let his guilt distance him from the kids, despite all Dean's efforts. Part of him had always been convinced that Dean was just running this asylum to keep his mind off the hunting he could no longer do, and thinking about it too much had just made him feel even more guilty about how he'd screwed up killing the demon in the first place. Sam hadn't known Marcy couldn't have kids because he'd been so sure of his own reasoning that he'd never bothered _asking_. He'd just assumed they'd started fostering to keep Dean busy (that stupid thrift-store job Dean had taken at first couldn't have kept anybody distracted for more than five minutes, let alone somebody with Dean's attention span) and then fallen in love with some of the kids who came to them.

He should have known better the first time he met Maggie. A normal kid her age wouldn't have run screaming away from him the way she had. A normal kid wouldn't have been so—so _adult_ in the questions she asked, like when she asked if Sarah was his girlfriend and followed his terse "She used to be" with a matter-of-fact "Is she dead?"

He should have _known_.

But no. He'd perfected his role as distant uncle, never coming close, never letting the kids _get_ close. He showed up at the adoption parties and plugged their birthdays into his calendar so he could send presents when he was supposed to, and he called at Christmas to get a list and headcount before he came down. He was the _king_ of child-appropriate gift cards.

And now he was ass-deep in this mess, and no idea where—or how—to fix things. How did you start a relationship with kids you'd been avoiding for years? For that matter, how did you start a relationship with kids who were going to be _gone_ in a few months? The green card for the twins' aunt was in the final stages; a private investigator had found Consuela's grandmother in Ecuador after two years of searching and she'd be moving there at the end of the school year, since her grandmother didn't want to come to the States; Maria's parents had been cleared of the abuse charges stemming from her poltergeist and she'd be going back to them soon. Even assuming he could manage with them, there would always be the _new_ kids. Dean had already mentioned that they'd be getting another toddler in February.

It wasn't like he could just _ask_ Dean, either. Dean had a knack with kids—always had, apparently, though before that incident with Lucas and the lake ghost, he'd hidden it so well that Sam hadn't had a clue—and Dean didn't always understand that other people _didn't_. Just like he'd never really understood why nobody else considered the Impala sacrosanct, or that some people actually didn't _like_ Zeppelin. Trying to convince him otherwise—

It would be easier to name all the grains of sand in the Sahara without repeating.

So. He had to slog through this on his own.

Well, with Ananda attached. That really couldn't be healthy, but Dean and Marcy—and Maggie and Johnny and Kevin and the grandparents and everybody else in this damn tribe—were too busy laughing to help.

It was enough to make a man wish he could go back and lecture his teenage self on just how great he'd had it when he only had two relatives. Since he couldn't do that, Sam settled for being a grown-up about it. He'd made this mess; now he had to fix it.

It might have been easier if, like Marcy or the older kids, he had a place to go during the day, something to keep him busy. It had taken him a couple of days to get unpacked, then another day to transfer what was left of his accounts out of New York, but now...

To his surprise, Dean and Marcy weren't pushing him toward a job, or even a set of chores. He'd expected to at least get stuck driving kids to school, but except for that first morning, nobody asked. They weren't even asking him for rent. He'd started helping with the older kids' self-defense lessons, but nobody had asked; he'd simply volunteered. After the rush-to-school danger was over, he usually wound up looking for his brother just to see if there was something that needed to be done. So far, he'd gotten stuck with taking down the Christmas decorations and changing every light bulb that was too high for anybody else to reach without a stepladder—but only after he _asked_. Mostly, Dean left him to his own devices; since Ananda and Kara were still too young for school, he had his hands full with them. Sam could probably get away with lying on the couch, watching TV all day, if he really wanted.

_If_ he wanted. The truth was, Sam wasn't used to a life of leisure. It had been—well, _never_ since Sam didn't have _something_ to do, some place to go, whether it was school or Dad's training or a hunt or even, these last few years, a normal job. Even during summer breaks at Stanford, he'd been busy with jobs to cover the gaps in his scholarship. Voluntarily subjecting himself to Ananda's bizarre attachment wouldn't be his first choice, but it was better than hiding in his room all day until the older kids got home from school.

_And if I just keep telling myself that..._ At least she hadn't tried to paint his nails again.

This wasn't one of the days Dean ran errands, and there weren't any appointments marked on the massive calendar in the kitchen, so it was a pretty good bet that he'd find Dean with the girls in the little kids' playroom in the back of the house. Sam hadn't even known what was back here, just like he hadn't realized that the downstairs guest room was basically a studio apartment, but these two rooms certainly explained why the Legos and dolls and art supplies hadn't taken over the rest of the house. And where the older kids vanished when it was homework time.

Ananda and Kara weren't old enough for homework, though, and one of these days, Sam was convinced he was actually going to catch his brother mid tea party. He hadn't decided yet if he was going to take pictures and gleefully send them to everyone they'd ever known, or collapse into a fetal huddle out of sheer trauma. Walking in one day to find Dean ass-deep in oversized pink-and-purple Legos, helping Ananda build a castle for an assortment of dolls and action figures while Kara supervised and collected additional building materials, had been disturbing enough.

Major trauma was avoided yet another day. Ananda was lying on her stomach on the floor, coloring a poster as big as she was. Dean was balancing Kara, a lap desk, a box of crayons, and a picture of— "Is that a _unicorn?_" Sam asked incredulously. He managed not to screech. Or collapse in hysterical laughter.

Dean shrugged and traded a purple crayon for a silver one. "She picked it out."

Sam just stared at his brother. He'd had crayons a few times, half-used boxes that he now knew Dean must have stolen from school, and some half-used coloring books, but coloring, like reading, had always been one of Sam's things. Dean had never had the ability to sit still that long, and there were probably some memories of Mom involved, too. Now...

It was _scary_ just how comfy Dean looked sitting there, coloring with his little girl. And it didn't matter that Kara, with her dark brown skin, was plainly not his biological offspring; the way she sat in Dean's lap, his arm around her, made it equally plain that she was _his_, and vice versa. No wonder he'd nearly taken Sam's head off when Sam asked why he didn't have his "own" kids. "You color now?"

"Too cold to go outside," Dean said indifferently. He glanced up at the bay window that overlooked the back yard; a digifilm weather display took up a hefty part of an upper pane. "Should warm up this afternoon, though. At least enough that we don't have to bundle them up too much."

"Why would—"

"So we can send _all_ the brats outside to run off their spare energy for an hour or so before homework and dinner. Makes 'em sleep better." He grinned. "Lets _me_ sleep better."

Sleep. Uh-huh. And his room was right below Dean and Marcy's.

Something of his thoughts must have shown, because the grin became a _definite_ smirk. "Don't worry, Sammy. Me and Marcy splurged on the pricey insulation in your ceiling. You haven't heard anything yet, have you?"

"Oh, for the love of—"

"And nobody can hear anything from your room upstairs, in case you want to have anybody over."

Those hints were getting annoying—Dean knew damn well that Sam didn't _know_ anybody in North Carolina that wasn't related to Marcy—but he decided to ignore it in favor of sarcasm. "Tell me again why you didn't put me in there every other time I came to visit?" The spare rooms upstairs weren't bad, just—cramped. Especially for adults. Not to mention, being on the same floor as the kids meant it was that much harder to keep them out.

"We couldn't watch you squirm." Dean looked up from the picture with that annoying little smile that he always got when he was watching Sam try to interact with the kids. "Besides, you never stayed more than a couple of nights. It wasn't worth the hassle."

Right. The upstairs rooms were always ready in case their caseworker had an emergency placement. The downstairs room, on the other hand, had been shut up for awhile, the heat turned all the way down, all the linens packed away, no supplies in the bathroom, and the mini-fridge hadn't even been plugged in. It would have taken some work—or at least some warning—to get it ready. "So, is there anything you—"

"Unca Sammy, color with me!" Ananda said.

"Um—" Dean paused in his own coloring to look up at him, his expression asking _Aw, is widdle Sammy scared?_ Dammit, Sam was never going to hear the end of this, no matter _what_ he did, and there was no way Dean would tell him about any chores now. Not with this kind of opportunity staring him in the face. "Okay," he said finally, awkwardly folding himself to the floor. The knee he'd wrenched back in their hunting days protested with a loud pop. A decent table would kill them? There was a table in the big kids' room for homework—

"You do the grass," Ananda ordered, handing him a purple marker.

"But grass is—"

"Not _here_," she said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. "They have purple grass."

He blinked. "Is that why the chipmunk's orange?"

"Dude, do _not_ get her started," Dean said. "The stories will keep you here all day." Sam stared at him. "Just go with it. _Trust me_."

Go with it. He could do that. Purple grass it was. And considering that one of the trees had blue leaves, he probably shouldn't argue too much.

Dean's warning had come too late; Ananda chattered about the trees and the grass and why the orange chipmunk didn't like the green bird, and when Sam glanced up at his brother, he could tell Dean was struggling not to laugh. Dean certainly wasn't coloring anymore, despite the crayon in his hand. _Note to self: Start checking classifieds_. This was giving Dean way too much ammo, and after all these years apart, Sam was pretty sure he'd only be able to handle it gracefully if he had some contact with normal people.

A phone rang from somewhere in Dean's chair. Dean pulled the phone out of one of the wheelchair pockets. "Hey, Bill, what's— Are you _kidding_ me?" Sam glanced up. Dean didn't look happy. "No, it's in the office with the rest—" He stuck his crayon back into the box and started trying to undo the lap desk one-handed.

"Dean—" Sam began, but Dean waved him off.

"Kara, get—" Kara didn't move. "Bill, you in the office? Okay, I'll call you back in five minutes, let me get the girls settled." He hung up, finished undoing the lap desk, and set a very unhappy Kara on the floor.

"Daddy—"

"Color with Uncle Sammy," he ordered. Kara's whole mood shifted, and she happily brought her picture over to where he and Ananda were, spread it out, and plopped herself on the floor beside it.

"Dean—"

"They've lost a form for the adoptions _again_ and Bill needs it ASAP," Dean said. "I swear, him and Jenn are the only people over there who can tie their own shoelaces. The rest of those morons couldn't fall off a cliff without a map. I've got to go dig it out and fax it to him."

"But—"

"You used to be a hunter, you can handle a couple of little girls for a few minutes."

Frankly, he'd rather have the ghosts. Ghosts were predictable. Little girls, he wasn't so sure about. "_Dean!_"

"Just color, dammit, Sammy," Dean hissed. "I'm sure somebody with your brains can figure out how."

"But—" Dean didn't wait for the argument, just wheeled out of the room, leaving him with the girls.

Sam made himself breathe. This was simple, after all. They weren't going to have screaming meltdowns just because Dean left the room. They both had their pictures and their markers and crayons. He could do this. That thing with Renee's nieces had been a fluke.

"Are you okay, Unca Sammy?"

And now he was scaring Ananda. "Fine," he forced himself to say.

Her eyes narrowed, like she thought he might be lying, but she only reached over and pointed out a patch of grass he'd missed. "Yes, ma'am," he muttered, turning back to his appointed task. He couldn't get too close to the paper, though—the damn marker smelled so powerfully like grape Kool-Aid that it was doing a number on his sinuses. And he was supposed to be watching Kara, too.

Kara finished with one color and set the crayon down—and then realized that Dean had left the box on a table out of her reach. Sam braced himself for a wail and started to push himself up—

The box floated off the table and over to them, landing gently next to Kara's coloring page. Without so much as a twitched finger, the crayon she wanted popped out of the box and right into her hand.

"You're not coloring," Ananda said disapprovingly, and that was when he realized he was staring. Sam jerked his attention back to their poster. Purple grass. Right. Ignore the tiny telekinetic.

"I think the grass is done," he said. There was another patch of it, but it was under Ananda's elbow.

She looked critically over his work, then snatched the purple marker away and shoved two more into his hands. "Work on the mountain."

Great. Blueberry and either strawberry or cherry. He hoped they weren't as strong as the grape. "The mountain's red and blue?"

"It's made out of layers of sapphire and ruby," she said matter-of-factly, and went back to her red-eyed teal squirrel.

"Of course it is," he muttered, wondering if he'd even known what sapphire and ruby were at her age. He really should have paid more attention when Dean started talking about the kids. But it wasn't like he got to meet all of them—some of the fosters weren't here more than a couple of weeks.

He started with the blue. He was pretty sure the artist had intended these lines to represent a snowcap, but if Ananda wanted a sapphire-and-ruby mountain, who was he to argue? He got the first "layer" done—undoubtedly, erosion was responsible for the exposed layers, and did he just try to justify Ananda's storytelling? _Jesus_—and reached for the red marker.

It rolled across the floor, stopping a few inches farther away. He didn't remember hitting it, but apparently he had. He stretched—

The red marker deliberately rolled two feet farther, well out of his reach.

He looked over at Kara. She just sat there, looking back at him with those big dark eyes. Daring him, the little brat.

She knew. Somehow, she _knew_. Sam was being challenged—and possibly outwitted—by a toddler.

Maybe he could work around it. "Ananda—" Ananda picked a yellow marker out of the pile and studiously applied her attention to a bird, pretending she couldn't hear him. Of course. Why would this be easy?

He looked at the marker, then back at Kara. She would undoubtedly start screaming bloody murder if he didn't do something. Wasn't that what little kids did when they were thwarted? She might start screaming even if he _did_ something, if it wasn't what she wanted. And then Dean would come charging in here and all Sam would hear for the next seven years was how he was such a freak that he couldn't even manage to color with a couple of little kids.

And that was just from Dean. Let the story get to Dean's in-laws, and Sam would have to move to Alaska to avoid the teasing.

Maybe he could work around it. He started to push himself up—

"No," Kara stated emphatically. "No move."

Oh, yeah. She _definitely_ knew.

Sam resisted the urge to pound his head against the floor. That way lay head injuries and more teasing, and if he got blood on her poster, Ananda would never forgive him.

_How hard can it be?_ He'd jerked a bowling ball out of a guy's hand, right out of the case and through a window. And that had been unintentional. Surely he could manage a marker.

Of course, his control had never been that great. He'd never _tried_ to control it, it just burst free when he got too emotional. When was the last time he'd intentionally tried to use the telekinesis, anyway?

_The cabin._ When the demon was possessing Dad, ripping Dean apart, taunting him with Jessica's death.

The marker spun around and skittered across the floor. Kara let out a squeal that sounded happy.

_See, that wasn't so hard._ Except that he needed the marker to keep Ananda happy, because if he didn't get back to coloring her mountain, God knew what _she_ would do. So he needed it to come _this_ way.

The next time he saw Missouri, he was going to kill her. He wouldn't have come here if not for her.

He focused on the marker. Focused _hard_. It twitched.

He needed—

The socket on the wall gave him an idea. There were memories that he kept stuffed down just as tightly as the power itself, and Dean's electrocution was one of them. Dean had handled that week _so_ much better than he had—

The marker spun again, but slowly, and then one end lifted off the floor.

_I'm afraid there's been severe damage to your brother's heart—_

The other end came up, and the marker was floating an inch in the air. His head was starting to hurt and there was pressure building up behind his eyes. He "pulled" at the marker, and it sluggishly edged toward him— God, he'd seen faster snails, but at least it was moving. Another few minutes, and he'd have it—

There was a chuckle from the door. Sam jerked around. The marker didn't clatter to the floor; instead, it jumped for the ceiling, then dived for cover somewhere in the curtains. "Dean! I—" Shit, how was he going to explain this? "Kara wanted— I mean, I didn't—we weren't—"

"Unca Sammy and Kara were playing with the markers," Ananda said matter-of-factly, not looking up from coloring— Jesus Christ, was that supposed to be a pink giraffe? What the hell kind of world lived in her head?

"Yeah, the stories were a lot simpler before Maggie taught her to read and she started spending quality time with Marcy's old encyclopedias," Dean said, reading his expression.

_What?_ Dean should be _infuriated_. Instead, he sounded almost—

"Daddy!" Kara climbed into Dean's lap. "Marker fly!"

"I saw. Did Uncle Sammy do that on his own, or did you make him?"

"Made him."

Dean made a noise that sounded like a half-strangled laugh. "Can't keep this one out of anything," he said fondly. Sam just stared at him. "Oh, get over it, it was just a marker. You're lucky she didn't throw a teddy bear at you. She can get some force behind those things. Kara, can you get the marker out of the curtains? Uncle Sammy's not as good at this as you are."

"Okay." The marker came zooming out of the curtains, did a couple of loops around the room, then came over to Sam. Bewildered, he held out his hand, and it fell gently into his palm.

"I don't— You're _okay_ with this? Telekinesis _in your house?_" He'd thought for sure that Dean was trying to teach Kara _not_ to use her powers. Dean had panicked so badly whenever Sam sent things flying—

Dean raised an eyebrow. "Let me explain Parenting A Mob 101, Sammy. If nobody's bleeding and nothing gets broken, it's good."

"But—"

"If your powers were really demonic, Ananda would _not_ still be on the floor next to you, okay?"

Sam looked at Ananda, who was giving the pink giraffe chartreuse spots. As if she sensed it, she looked up at him—and channeled Marcy's best disapproving stare. "The mountain's not finished, Unca Sammy."

"See? Now finish coloring that mountain."

"Do I—"

"You can finish coloring, or _you_ can explain why you can't."

Sam glanced at Ananda, who glared back. Backing out at this juncture was probably not the best decision. "Um. Sure." The red marker turned out to be cherry, and as strong as the damn grape. He'd be lucky to finish this mountain without his eyes watering.

"Maybe after lunch, Kara can show you some new tricks. Whaddya say, Kara?" Dean tickled her, and she let out an ear-piercing shriek—presumably a happy one. "Get your picture, munchkin." She fetched her poster while Dean got the lap desk re-settled—the box of crayons drifting behind her in mid-air. "Oh, and Sam?" He looked up. "You're not a guest, you're family. This is your house, too."


End file.
